Penn State University Libraries faculty recently voted to embrace open access principles when publishing their scholarly articles. The Open Access Policy, passed into legislation at the February 11, 2015, Library Faculty Organization meeting, preserves the right of library faculty to publish where they wish, but encourages authors to take advantage of open access opportunities whenever feasible.
An underlying principle of open access is to make scholarly output available at no cost to readers. In addition to the proliferation of reputable and high quality open access journals, many traditional publishers are amenable to authors making a version of their articles accessible online, either at the time of formal publication, or following an embargo period.
ScholarSphere, Penn State's repository for scholarly work launched in 2012, will be the institutional location for deposit and sharing of faculty research. ScholarSphere records are harvested regularly by search engines such as Google, increasing the likelihood of ready discovery over the Internet. Dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications Barbara I. Dewey lauded the new policy.
Penn State Libraries faculty join their colleagues at other institutions including Columbia, Arizona State, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Oregon State, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, and the University of Northern Colorado, who have all voted to support the principles of open access for their scholarly work.
The first vote in favour of open access within a university faculty in the United States took place in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Feb. 12, 2008. Other faculty organisations, both nationally and internationally, have followed suit, endorsing institution-wide as well as department or college-wide initiatives. Institutions where the entire faculty body has voted in support of open access include the University of California, Cornell, Princeton, Duke and the University of Kansas.
